Sure It Tastes Like Shit, But The Portions Are Huge

Kim Conte is some kind of self-styled food critic at one of those fucking annoying momblogs which are the repository of commonsense moms who give commonsense advice to other commonsense moms based upon their shared ability to launch a baby from their vagina and then proceed to not kill it, leave it in the shopping cart at the Food King, or trade it to a stranger for “magic beans” within the first five years of its life.

The readership of these blogs are traditionally made up of the type of women who have vanity license plates on their minivans that say something like ‘CODYSMOM’ in addition to those little stick figure decals on the back window advertising dad and mom and however many kids are in the family , stickers by the way, which serve as a helpful menu to any passing predator or possibly a Catholic priest.

But getting back to Food Goddess Conte, who advertises herself thusly:

It’s a hard life, but somebody’s got to get paid to eat—and, that’s just what Kim Conte has been doing for the last 10+ years. Career highlights include: reviewing 30 late-night restaurants in seven days; eating 16 different bread puddings in one weekend; and posting more one-pot recipes than ever thought possible. Her not-so-secret food crushes are Anthony Bourdain, Eric Ripert, and truffle salt. She wants to be Giada De Laurentiis when she grows up.

Why does everyone insist on picking on Olive Garden? Surely, there are more offensive chain restaurants to mock that don’t offer unlimited amounts of their delicious signature offerings.

Suppressing my gag reflex, I momentarily gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed that she was being ironic/sarcastic/snarky (in regard to this) about food that is so fucking gawdawful that even the Irish make fun of it.

But, no. No she most certainly was not…:

Apparently, the former manager meant to defame Olive Garden with this shocking revelation. Instead, Olive Garden fans across the nation responded to the news with a collective shrug: After all, they don’t go to the restaurant because it’s authentic. As anyone who’s ever sampled the bread-sticks will most certainly tell you, they go because it tastes good.

It was simple: We were going to meet at the Olive Garden, where we would act like tourists and explore the wonders of seafood alfredo and unlimited bread sticks, to express for once the simple goodness of Venetian apricot chicken and grilled shrimp caprese, of chicken scampi and smoked mozzarella fonduta and lasagna fritta. (What is lasagna fritta? Apparently rolled lasagna sliced into thick discs, crisped in trans-fat-free boiling oil and served with a marinara dipping sauce. Words for once fail me.)